


Ruination

by entanglednow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-16
Updated: 2010-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:16:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a question Sam's been meaning to ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruination

Sam can't for the life of him think of a tactful way to phrase it, to ask for it. Because what if it _wasn't_ the sort of thing you were supposed to ask for? Something intrusive and wrong, like asking someone if they loved you. Lucifer's already admitted to that, quietly, in the dark and half-murmured into his skin.

But Lucifer has never shown him his wings, and now Sam knows, thanks to Castiel and Dean that _that_ is intimacy to an angel. Lucifer has remained as cold and closed off as he always has done. He's never offered Sam that. He only knows from what Castiel told him that it's something that happens without thought when angels becomes intimate. It takes more effort to hold them in then, to keep them hidden, once you'd touched that deeply. Dean had told him it was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen. Brightness and warmth and euphoria, like being high in every cell of your body.

Sam doesn't know why, he doesn't know why Lucifer hasn't shown them to him. When he's spent every night for a week claiming every inch of Sam as his own.

The motel room's cold and Lucifer drifts on silent feet from the table to where Sam's frowning out the window.

"Something's wrong." It's not a question, it's a statement.

"I don't know whether to ask you something or not," Sam admits.

"You can ask me anything," Lucifer says simply. Sam thinks for most people that's just a phrase they throw around, they don't really mean it. He knows Lucifer means it, every word of it. It makes things easier, and impossibly harder at the same time.

"I don't know whether it's allowed."

"We've already broken many of the rules of what's allowed and what isn't," Lucifer reminds him.

Lucifer's promised not to read his mind, so there's an expression of taut curiosity on his face, a wariness. Lucifer mistrusts the whole world, and Sam's not sure he'll ever be able to change that. He's surprised that Lucifer honestly doesn't know though. Promising not to read his mind and actually doing it are very different. The devil still has issues with control.

"You've never shown me your wings," Sam says, quietly, haltingly. "I assumed I wouldn't be able to see them anyway. But then I talked to Castiel..." Sam stops talking because there's something flat in Lucifer's expression that he's never seen before,

"You don't spend hundreds of thousands of years in hell without consequences," Lucifer says. The words are slow, and reluctant.

Sam doesn't know what to say to that, doesn't know what he's supposed to say to that. Because it had never occurred to him that Lucifer's wings might be - that there might be a good reason why he's never shown them to him, something deeper, something personal.

"No," Sam says quickly. "I just thought - I'm sorry - I didn't think. I'm still learning how this is supposed to go, for us. Castiel said that it just happened."

"I'm not Castiel," Lucifer says at last. There's something under the flatness of the words, something Sam can't quite catch. It's buried too deeply. "Wings don't sit well in hell. It burns hot enough there to tear into them, and mine were far too often used as a shield, or a weapon. They spent millennia dragging through the filth of hell, or drenched in the blood of demons. They're best left folded away. I can barely feel them any more. They've been shredded and remade too often. I was forced to sever almost all sensation I felt through them for self-preservation."

Sam catches the undercurrent there, it's sharp and it's so blankly hopeless that he can't breathe.

Lucifer watches him, watches his silence. "I am ruined beyond any hope of repair. There's little point revealing my wings to you. They're no longer fit for the purpose they were intended, and even less so for anything you would do with me. For anything we would do together."

Sam reaches out, fingers touching the back of Lucifer's hand.

"I'm sorry."

Lucifer steps back, pulls out of reach. "You will ask this of me once, and after you'll never ask me again," he says flatly, like he's certain of it.

Sam shakes his head, because he understands perfectly that Lucifer doesn't want to. "No, honestly, you don't have to," he insists. Because he doesn't want it like this, he doesn’t want it to feel _forced_.

"You have a right to see them."

"But if you don't want to I understand." Sam's starting to feel like a bastard for bringing it up, because Lucifer is grey, face set like it's carved from stone. There's an unnatural stiffness to him, something hard and protective. "I don't want to make you feel like you have to. I don't want that."

Lucifer shakes his head. "Castiel's right. You should have seen. I should have shown you at the beginning. I told you I was yours." It's supposed to be intimacy but now Lucifer's tensed up like it's a punishment, like he expects nothing good to come of it.

The room is abruptly dark, and for a second Sam's certain the lights have gone. But there are still lines and slivers of brightness across the ceiling. The room's not dark, it's just _full_. There are more than two, that's the first thing Sam notices. Some occupying the same space at the same time, like overlapping echoes of each other. They're not made of feathers. They're more like spaces torn out of the air _shaped_ like feathers, a lattice of energy and matter so heavy it bends the world. Or maybe that’s just how Sam's eyes register them. They're sharp and dark and tattered like torn cloth, slick like they've been dipped in ink and leaking slow lines of silver. The edges curl and flicker orange like they're on fire. But the arches hiss like they're made of ice. An impossible blending of heat and terrible cold.

They curl forward, shadows wrong where they fall, like that darkness might crawl forward and tear Sam apart. He fights the urge to draw away, to stumble back out of the range of them.

They're terrifying.

"My god," Sam murmurs, helplessly, then bites his tongue.

There's nothing from Lucifer, not even a flinch.

"Devils have little need of wings. You can't fly in hell."

Sam's hand twitch restlessly at his sides.

"But they have need of weapons," Lucifer adds.

"Do they hurt?" Sam manages, throat completely dry.

"Not any more," Lucifer says slowly. Sam can hear the memory of old pain there and he can't even imagine what it would have been like. He takes a step forward, tenses when the shadow shiver and lift, like a snake getting ready to strike.

Lucifer stays completely silent. He lets Sam judge him.

"I didn't know."

"How could you have known." Lucifer's voice is soft and for the first time there's something that sounds like apology there.

Sam forces himself to move forward. Lucifer's wings crawl backwards, like he knows Sam's afraid of them, horrified at the vast, burning mess of them. He pulls them away like he expected him to be.

"I am not an angel, and the pieces of me that still remember how to be are damaged beyond repair."

Sam's close enough to curl a hand round the back of Lucifer's neck, to step in under the shadowy ripple of darkness.

"They're yours."

"Yes," Lucifer admits, and there's something there that's still proud. That's still glorious underneath. The angel who went to hell for an eternity and came out alive. The wings arc above them, ripping into the ceiling with a harsh tearing rasp of sound.

"I love you," Sam says, and it's soft and barely audible against the tightness of Lucifer's jaw. Where he's still not used to saying it. Sam lifts his other hand, fingers tangling and twisting in Lucifer's shirt. "I refuse to pick and choose which bits of you to love and which not to."

Lucifer just breathes quietly until Sam pulls him forward and takes his weight, takes all of him, ruined wings and all.

  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Ruination / written by entanglednow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/381306) by [EosRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EosRose/pseuds/EosRose)




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